Giant intrinsic chirality from planar dielectric nanostructures

Harvard researchers have developed a metasurface comprising a single planar layer of nanostructures exhibiting strong optical chirality in transmission. This means it can let circularly polarized light of one polarization pass through almost unhindered, while light of the opposite helicity is completely diffracted away. Such capabilities are incredibly useful for a host of applications, including circular dichroism spectroscopy in the analysis of drug samples, and polarization filters in telecommunications.